orlandosentinel.com has a new, more detailed report of George Zimmerman’s account of what happened on the night he shot Trayvon Martin. As you’d expect, Zimmerman maintains that Martin attacked without provocation. “Zimmerman told [the police] he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words. Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone, he told police. Trayvon then said, ‘Well, you do now’ or something similar and punched Zimmerman in the nose . . . Zimmerman fell to the ground and Trayvon got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk, he told police. Zimmerman began yelling for help . . .

Several witnesses heard those cries, and there has been a dispute about whether they came from Zimmerman or Trayvon.

Lawyers for Trayvon’s family say it was Trayvon, but police say their evidence indicates it was Zimmerman.

One witness, who has since talked to local television news reporters, told police he saw Zimmerman on the ground with Trayvon on top, pounding him — and was unequivocal that it was Zimmerman who was crying for help.

Zimmerman then shot Trayvon once in the chest at very close range, according to authorities.

We’ve also learned why Trayvor Martin was suspended from school for five days, and it isn’t “tardiness” as reported earlier. According to the Miami Herald, Miami-Dade Schools Police reported finding a bag with marijuana residue and a ‘marijuana pipe’ in the 17-year-old’s possession.

This was not Martin’s first run-in with the school heat.

In October, a school police investigator said he saw Trayvon on the school surveillance camera in an unauthorized area “hiding and being suspicious.” Then he said he saw Trayvon mark up a door with “W.T.F” — an acronym for “what the f—.” The officer said he found Trayvon the next day and went through his book bag in search of the graffiti marker.

Instead the officer reported he found women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that he described as a “burglary tool,” according to a Miami-Dade Schools Police report obtained by The Miami Herald . . .

Trayvon’s backpack contained 12 pieces of jewelry, in addition to a watch and a large flathead screwdriver, according to the report, which described silver wedding bands and earrings with diamonds.

Trayvon was asked if the jewelry belonged to his family or a girlfriend.

“Martin replied it’s not mine. A friend gave it to me,” he responded, according to the report. Trayvon declined to name the friend.

According to the paper, the school sent info on the jewelry to the police. (There’s no intel on whether or not the police connected the jewelry to a reported burglary.) The schol suspended Martin for the graffiti.

The Sentinel reports that Martin’s family has expressed their unhappiness with news reports detailing Trayvor’s school record—in no uncertain terms.

Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, said “even in death, they are still disrespecting my son, and I feel that that’s a sin.”

About Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the Publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

I hope like hell that once the decision is made, and the charges are either filed or no-billed, that basically every bit of investigative material available is plastered across the front page of every paper around, but most definitely in central Florida. I want it to painfully obvious to anyone who looks at it why the decision was made the way it was, one way or the other.

I can honestly say I jumped to a conclusion. I saw, in my mind, a continuously running confrontation, in which Zimmerman accosted Martin, and Martin reacted accordingly. To be completely honest, the scenario that Zimmerman lays out here, of contact lost/broken and then re-initiated by Martin, never even occurred to me. At this point, I’m going to do what I should have done from the beginning, and I’m not making any further conclusions about what happened that night. That’s what the prosecutor/grand jury is for, at this point, because they have loads of information that I don’t.

17 is not a child! The picture the media shows is Trayvon about 13-14 years old. Several news stories state that Trayvon is somewhere close to 6′ 3″ and anywhere from 150 to 200 lbs. Zimmerman is about 5′, 9″ and over 200 lbs. NO one deserves to die, no one. But, if someone were to try to ass-whip me, I just might defend myself too.

I’ll translate “If you question a black person you deserve to get your ass kicked” because that’s essentially every ‘Zimmerman deserved to get his ass kicked because he has the audacity to get out of his vehicle in his neighborhood’ argument has been. And by all this added information, it seems pretty clear Trayvon was a suspicious looking person.

Unfortunately that’s what Zimmerman’s accusers are now left with. Along with the corollary that once you’ve encountered them, you are fair game for whatever they choose to do to you and have relinquished your right to self defense.

So in their zeal to convict Zimmerman they are willing to endorse the worst stereotypes of black men.

The so-called child was on top of Zimmerman physically accosting him. If he (Martin) was so innocent why did he feel the need to stick around & beat the crap out of him? Zimmerman probably did initiate contact, but he was neighborhood watch, & with what was found in Martin’s bag (“burglary tool” & men/women’s jewelry) at school he (Zimmerman) had good reason to inquire about his (Martin) goings on. The evidence that has been released would lead a rational person to believe that Martin was at minimum a thief. Lastly, because someone approaches you & inquires about what you are doing does not give you the right to physically assault them. You just might get shot.

The Obama Administration & the JD have too much investigated in a hot button issue that riles up the base in an election year to just let the locals handle this. I think based on this new info Zimmerman will NOT be indited but in the end you will have a lengthy JD “civil rights” investigation, with some sort of a show trial if it really looks like Obama is going to have trouble getting re-elected. This is the perfect issue for Obama and the dems; “crazy” republican/NRA backed gun laws leading to a “Rogue Armed Man” shooting a “Good boy” dead in cold blood. I feel sorry for this Zimmerman guy, this is a no win situation and one way or the other his life as he knew it is over. He will be lucky to escape this with the clothes on his back and any cars/homes he had in his name. If this had been March 2013 or March 2011 this story would have just blown right over in a week.

I’ve been asked my input by a few people thus far as I’m the “gun nut”.

My response has always been “the information available has not been sufficient to form an opinion. However, as represented in the news media, I don’t feel both sides of the argument have been adequately represented as the shooter has not been arrested or charged with a crime.”

I’m ambivalent to my “side” in this case. I will not deny the actions by the shooter were less than cautious and responsible. I also will not argue that the actions of the deceased did not play a role in the outcome.

All I will say is I’m not voluntarily wearing either of their shoes for a mile-long stroll.

If true, the report casts a different light on things. Martin was armed. More specifically he used the sidewalk as a weapon, much as an assailant might use a push off a tall structure to kill someone. And someone who doesn’t understand that smashing another s head into the pavement is an act with a high potential for lethality, that’s just too bad.

Just like Martin’s checkered past is irrelevant, this account makes Zimmerman’s actions up to the point of the physical encounter irrelevant. If this story is true, then Zimmerman was justified, and should not be charged.

the assault in this case would be elevated from simple assault, to aggravated, a felony.

What is curious about this whole case to me is the fact that all this uproar has come after a police investigation of a fatal shooting. It is not as if the police hadn’t time to interview witnesses, study the scene, perform tests, whatever. All of those things were done and the police found no evidence of a chargeable crime in that the only person who could have been charged for the events of that night was dead.
Now enter the circus; why?
Not much talk about Fast and Furious the last few days, not the that the media was jumping all over that scandal involving far more than one death.
But you might wonder like I do, why did the media pick this story to splash everywhere.

The pendulum is always swinging and you can only push it so far before it pushes back. I hope that todays sensationalistic and often false or incomplete news reports will be replaced by something…better eventually.

In a shameless note, what is emerging seems pretty much in line with my comment “against my instincts” to the post “Life Imitates Art,” and the formerly wild kid’s take on things. I’m not happy about it though: Easy to sit in an armchair and speculate on both views. Painful to be the families of either of these guys.

RD, this is coming down to a sad denouement. Any way it unfolds will be bad.

All I can say is, if I ever have to deploy my guns, I’ll do it, take the consequences and not look back. Then again, I’m not 28 like George Zimmerman. At my age, there’s not much that “they” can do to me.

I worked the sytem for most of my adult life. I’d take my chances with it.

Have hope! Once the media looks at how they’ve handled this story, they can take another look at F and F: I can see it now. Clips of Mexicans shooting. Holder caught at a luxurious lunch laughing with pals. Panicked Mexicans running from gun fire. A wounded 4 year old mexican girl covered in blood. Holder testifying he knew nothing about it, it wasn’t important enough for him. More blood. Put those skills to work….we know you understand how to juice it! Apparently without inflaming the common folks government won’t get anything done, aside from the usual debasing of the currency and issuance of more no-compete contracts.

Under the law and with the facts you know, why do you say it needs to go to trial? Would you expect, yourself, to be sent to trial with the information you have? Do you think the FL law intends that result?

Under the law and with the facts you know, why do you say it needs to go to trial? Would you expect, yourself, to be sent to trial with the information you have? Do you think the FL law intends that result?”

No, I am not saying it needs to go to trial. I am saying it needs to go to trial or not. It needs to be off the air. Out of the media. Over with. This story has gotten so many people riled up over things that most people don’t even know what. All speculation and all hearsay.

What I am saying is that the investigators need to light a fire and have this done. Done according to law (of course) and done with due diligence.

I am not picking a side until an official report is made and a person from the government stands on a podium and tells the relative truth of what happened.

I am sorry if I was vague but I am not picking one side or the other with the information presented. I am merely pointing out that the agitation is building and needs to stop.

The story that Martin attacked Zimmerman first has been pushed by the defense and Zimmerman since day 1, so I don’t exactly see this as new info.

Of course Zimmerman’s defense are going to claim Martin was the aggressor; to admit anything else would destroy the chance of “self defense” being a viable reason for Zimmerman shooting Martin. If Zimmerman initiated a confrontation, threatened Martin, and it was MARTIN who felt he had to defend himself by punching Zimmerman… do we honestly expect Zimmerman to tell a side of the story that makes Martin look good?

It starts to stretch believability that Martin, who goes from talking on a cellphone with his girlfriend and in Zimmerman’s sight, to stealth ninja mode, able to suddenly sneak up on the “neighborhood watch captain” who has patrolled his neighborhood’s streets countless times? Exactly how far away was Zimmerman from his SUV? Was he that oblivious that he HEARD nothing? Carrying a can of ice tea and pack of Skittles isn’t exactly noiseless and stealthy. Does Zimmerman have hearing problems?

On the school suspension…

The charge that Martin was suspended because traces of marijuana were found in Martin’s book bag at school, is a distraction from the case. Let’s face it, HS kids experiment with booze, cigs, and yes, weed. It doesn’t mean they, or Martin deserve to die. The detail is being used of course to justify the shooting. As if Zimmerman had instant access to Martin’s school records and determined, “Whoa, this kid has smoked weed once! DANGEROUS THREAT!”

What would be more relevant is IF Martin had marijuana on him the night he was killed, since I’ve read more than a few comments online saying Martin was some sort of drug dealer. OK, fair enough. What were the results of the police autopsy / toxicology reports? Was Martin, as some claim, high on drugs at the time?

Things still don’t add up to me. And Zimmerman’s defense hasn’t given enough facts to convince me 100% that he’s blameless in abusing the privileges and responsibilities of gun ownership. Losing a fistfight in a confrontation that evidence points to you initiating doesn’t entitle you to shoot an unarmed 17 year old minor.

So what about Zimmerman’s 46 previous calls to 911 BEFORE the night of Martin’s murder? Apparently the guy called 911 everytime he saw something he didn’t like, whether it was children playing around, open garage doors, garbage, dogs, or suspicious black males. Pattern of paranoia, anyone?

Do we know how many shots were fired? In one 911 tape posted on Youtube, you can hear a few seconds of wailing, and THEN a gunshot (to which the lady calling 911 also reacts, and from that point she refers to only one gunshot). It’s not clear whether she’s calling 911 because there may have been gunshots prior to that one or was it because somebody was screaming for help (and no shots were fired yet)?

46 calls over 8 years by a neighborhood watch captain doesn’t seem excessive or paranoid. Averages out to 6 calls per year. It’s possible that some of the calls made by him were prompted by someone in the neighborhood reporting incidents to him.

@G +1. I’ve worked at a jail long enough to know not to believe a person when his back’s against the wall. People will say anything to try and get out of trouble. “Believe non of what you hear and only half of what you see” is what my father taught me. I question the witnesses as to what they actually saw if it was as late and as dark as people claim it was. I agree that this case is a mess and I’m afraid that with Trayvon dead, we may never know the truth.

“It starts to stretch believability that Martin, who goes from talking on a cellphone with his girlfriend and in Zimmerman’s sight”

Run the girlfriend’s story by the story of the 911 caller who witnessed the beating and you can tell the girlfriend is completely full of crap. There’s no way to square the two accounts and I give the 911 caller much more credence.

We, participants in this blog world, itself buffeted by a larger louder major-media clamor, were originally given various highly filtered views of the Sanford event. We ourselves sat very remote in space and a bit in time from the few square meters where the bloody action occurred. Focusing on the shooting through bits of news, itself variously blunt, polemical, accurate, or wishful, we hoped (I did) to profit by observing the conflicting reports, noticing the values and distortions each might hold, seeing the false among them, which ever they were, slowly deconstructed by counterpoised facts as those facts emerged. We were inspired to see in our mind’s eye many Technicolor films given false flesh from the florid and self-certain words flooding forth from the individual writers and public speakers. Biased by a hope of redemption for one party or another, each magnified such details as they hoped would become the essence of the final narrative, the one held in the public mind long after the events themselves had passed. What is emerging in these last days of March is to me an image not unlike that which battle on gray rain-swept days left me in their wake, an image as cold and ungilded as a police report, increasingly fleshed out by the secrets of two lives unceremoniously slapped on the table before us with a sense of detachment necessarily reserved for such things. The tragedy of the matter is far larger than I would have imagined, because it is a tragedy of culture. The public voices so bellicose or exasperated or reflexive in their solidarity at first, now have time for a sober second-thought. For the parents on both sides I am sure there remains only the pain they feel for their offspring and the hope that the cameras will slip away quickly, fleeing to the site of their next reckless exposures, to can another batch of griping but unbalanced video and politicized sound-bites, “film at 11.”

That is a fancy bit of writing, Ropingdown. Well done. I especially liked:

“Technicolor films given false flesh from the florid and self-certain words flooding forth from the individual writers and public speakers.”

This whole deal is a compicated mess, and when the dust settles, nobody is going to be happy. There is the issue of race – I know people on the right want to pretend we’re done with that, but we’re not. There is the issue of the right to self-defense. There is yet another case of failure of law enforcement. Jeez…

This isn’t a simple world. My kid, a young twenty-something, told me about two things he saw this month. He witnessed a purse snatching done by a young black guy of a middle aged white woman. He observed, one block from a stage theatre performing Sophocles’ Agememnon, two Italian American guys with Rottweilers sitting on a stoop letting the dogs harass a black man walking by in a suit and tie, and sneering. People have to think about what the hell they are doing. It f’g depresses me. Stop the punching, stop the dogs, stop the shady slim bull, stop the hate. The problem is? They apparently have to happen all on the same day. “No, I ain’t goin’ first. YOU go first!” It’s so lame I could scream.

Yep. I will say the onus is still mostly on us white folks to show good will, but sometimes good will is not good enough. I guess at some point, we can’t be “us and them”, we just have to be “us.” I think I’m there, but I may be wrong. We live in a troubled, sick society.

Fine summary RD. Thanks for articulating what seems to be coming the universal condition. No absolutes, black and white, or resolution. I sense a sort of stampede for simplicity, yielding greater uncertainty. We flee the gray distortions of economics, politics, foreign policy. Seek refuge in an understandable right wrong play. Discovering here too, our view has been crafted.

If he’s innocent? Of course he’s innocent, at least in the eyes of the law. What actually happened I don’t know, but the bit about the cops not arresting him because they’re racist is nonsense. Cops might arrest the innocent because of prejudice, but never the other way around. There has to be money or career advancement on the line for them to let someone walk when they think they can get a conviction, ’cause at the end of the day, it’s putting people in prison that gets a cop a pat on the back. The cop who makes several high profile arrests will always be promoted faster than the cop who refuses to arrest innocent people.

I see it damn near every day on the Detroit news stations. Quantravious De’Andre Jackson III is in front of a judge for the brutal rape, murder and robbery of X number of people. The police have overwhelming evidence. He’s soundly convicted and sentenced to no less than forty seven consecutive life sentences. The camera the cuts to a grief-stricken mother or grandmother telling us what a “good kid” Quantravious was, how he played high school basketball and was going to get a scholarship as soon as he finished up night school and applied to college, and he was an aspiring rapper who always did the dishes and wiped his feet when he came home at 4am. He was such a good kid, and why did this have to happen to him?

“The Sentinel reports that Martin’s family has expressed their unhappiness with news reports detailing Trayvor’s school record—in no uncertain terms.”

+1000 I agree this happens almost every time. There family and friends say they are all such great well behaved upstanding members of society. Except for the fact that they ended up dead in someones hallway with a crowbar in their hand and multiple .45 holes in their body.

The facts are still coming out yet the media uproar has already made their decision. It’s like the Duke lacrosse team all over again and if the usual suspects are proven wrong again they probably won’t utter a single apology. The lacrosse team was dragged through hell and back and never got one.

It’s Segal’s “Love Story” all over again, with a twist: “Being obnoxious ratings vultures means never having to say you’re sorry.” Maybe Vladimir Putin is right? “TV is just for the idiots. Intelligent people get their news from the internet.”

No. Watch it. You’ll learn something. George was never in jail for attacking women. Watch the video. On every side the problems go very deep. If the media keeps up the BS, or my Mayor does, everyone will just throw in the towel and pick sides. That is not the outcome we want, is it? Well? Is it?

Here’s the thing, regardless of who or what instigated their confrontation, Trayvon’s attack on Zimmerman persisted for an extended period of time – you can establish this from the unedited 911 recordings that have been released. He didn’t simply subdue him and disengage. It’s apparent that he continued to beat him for several minutes. And Zimmerman finally shot him, which ended the encounter.

So any characterization of this incident still establishes that Zimmerman was well within a self defense claim, much less a ‘stand your ground’ defense. He was unable to retreat, and his attacker was unwilling to desist.

I could have been Trayvon at that age. But I was lucky, and also didn’t beat on people when they were down. Though if I had, and persisted in pummeling someone who was incapacitated, they’d have been in their rights to shoot me.

Unfortunately I suspect Mr. Zimmermann is going to do some time, Florida, Federal or both. The truth is no longer important, race-politics has entered the arena and the truth has left the building. The race-appeasers will pillory Mr. Zimmermann regardless of his guilt or innocence to mollify the race-baiters and kick the can of truth down the road a little further. I’m afraid the race-business is all powerful.

Even the POTUS has gotten his 2 seconds in on this one. Truth be damned, we have a warm body and hot temper to string up the tree branch. It’s the same reason we only see a 12 year old Trayvon versus his tatted and gold-tooth current edition.

The media won’t be satisfied until they have started a full on race war. Now DoJ and the King have weighed in on it and the Black Panther wing has showed up to collect George’s head.
Cops are not always able to prevent crime but they are better at investigating what happened.

Zimmerman WILL walk. Not because he is innocent of any wrong doing, but rather due to the actions of ALL those involved, to include the imposter-dictater in charge. The scene is now set for a mistrial. The defense attorney will/should ask for change of venue. Failing to get that, he will then go for a mistrial. Reason, the case has been tried by those not there, in the news, and on this site. The police did not make an arrest as the evidence at the time would not support it. Zimmerman stated that he had broken off. He had returned to his car. Martin then chose to confront Zimmerman.
Is this the case? I have no idea, as I was not there. I offer no thoughts on guilt or innocence. What I do offer is this, STOP trying this case in public. Each and everytime someone starts the racial b.s., it gives more fuel to an already over fed fire. Zimmerman by the way is Hispanic, NOT white! So stop the white on black crap.
Let the cops do what they need to do. Al (NOT SO) sharp-TON, needs to take his racist dialogue, along with the Rev. Jack-stoned, and crawl back under the rock,
from which they came.

You’re about three years ahead of yourself. Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested, much less indicted. I understand that there is a grand jury investigation, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Besides, it also remains to be seen whether a change of venue would hurt or help. Racial politics works both ways.

No one posting here was eyewitness to Zimmerman v Martin. One can only speculate as to what may have happened. The statistical probability ( which cannot trump the details of this particular incident) is that Martin attacked Zimmerman. I base my opinion on the mongraph “The Color of Crime,” from which the following material is abstracted:

Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.

From the safety and comfort of my armchair, I can speculate that Zimmerman was not likely to have initiated an assault against Martin. To reemphasize, crime statistics do not establish the truth of any particular incident, but they do form a backdrop that can be used to evaluate competing claims.

Until the facts (investigated by a competent authority who has access to eyewitness accounts) can demonstrate otherwise, I remain sceptical that Zimmerman is guilty of criminal homicide.

Disparity of force? If the report is true how many times do you need to have your head slammed into a cement sidewalk before permanent brain damage is done? In the heat of the moment I’m not going to pause to think “if this kid continues to bash my head in, will I die”.

I don’t believe Zimmerman should have left his truck in the first place but in my opinion once attacked at this level (if true) deadly force was warranted.

“Disparity of force”?! You’re joking, right? Having one’s head smacked against asphalt is most certainly a signal to take off the kid gloves. I prefer to keep my brain INSIDE my skull; no doubt Mr. Zimmerman felt the same.

Why is George Zimmerman called Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin called Trayvon? If George Zimmerman is a white Hispanic, is POTUS a white black? Why is the FBI investigating a purely local crime (the shooting of Martin by George) and ignoring a purely Federal crime (the bounty on George by the Black Pussycats Panthers? When POTUS said “if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon,” was he looking at an old picture or a crime scene photo?

I really can’t see the “my son” remark as smart politics. Obama had 97% of the black vote, and can expect as much in 2012.
Maybe, just maybe, he will lose part of the Hispanic vote with his hasty leap to “adopt” Martin.
Does he think he might be losing that overwhelming majority among Black voters?

Zimmerman’s nowhere near as “beat up” as he claimed to be – no large lacerations on his clearly shaved head (there’d be blood or large bruises), nose looks in good shape (not bleeding profusesly), and even more interesting: his clothes are relatively clean for somebody that was prone on the ground getting “beat up” by Martin.

That and Zimmer looks like he’s in OK shape. The way some of you were talking about him, you’d think he’d be a more pudgy version of the Fatman.

I don’t think the man in this video knows what he is talking about. The bottom line is that Zimmerman “the neighborhood watch captain” was armed because it’s his right as an american to be armed. It doesn’t matter if he’s a watch captain or just some guy taking a walk. Who ever is right or wrong, this is how I see it. You should avoid physical confrontation whenever possible. When you engage in physical confrontation with someone you should expect your opponent to defend himself if he feels his life or body is in danger. If he has a gun in his possession that means you get shot. If you are Trayvon Martin it doesn’t matter if George Zimmerman was right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if he was acting in self defense or participating in mutual combat. None of that matters now because you are dead. Should have avoided the situation in the first place.